I see that this problem has happened many times, and I've tried the suggestions but have not been able to solve the issue.
Following instructions I found to change the username, I entered recovery mode and entered
mount -o rw,remount /
and then changed the username from 'djvanel' to:
usermod student
I also changed the password. Then when I try to log in with the GUI, it accepts my password, the screen turns black for about a second, then it comes back to the login screen. I can still log into a shell. I have tried:
chown student:student ~/.Xauthority
then it gives back 'no such file or directory'. I also tried installing gmd and that also didn't work. I also reinstalled ubuntu-desktop. Now when I go back to recovery mode and change back my username and password, I still get the login loop.